Lastly, cool shower thought: Just as we on BioLogos interpret the creation story (discretely expressed in the Bible) as a spectrum, as evolution is progressive (continuum), what if the same thing exists with “Original Sin”? Expressed as a singular, discrete moment in scripture, but actually is a progressive event (consistent with my descriptions of the “self”)?
And this whole arc of humanity from the fall to the redemption to the eventual reunification, is to show that the flesh was created to be strong, beautiful, creative, intelligent, all things that are “good” as God said after creating us - but it is nothing without love, and was created to serve love.
No, I am claiming that Paul was not wrong when he wrote that the commandment – the law – only brings death.
It did not bring righteousness, it did not bring life, it magnified sin and brought death – Paul writes this more than once.
Where is that written? The purpose of the law according to the scriptures was to establish a covenantal relationship – it was the written “contract”.
No, it enables us to die to what was unable to bring life – through the Cross we die to the law, according to Paul. Paul tells us that the law only served to magnify sin; dying to the law frees us from sin.
Jesus even told us that we should ignore the law – the law insists on an eye for an eye, but Jesus flat out said don’t do that! In other words Jesus agreed with Paul that following the law doesn’t bring righteousness.
So the power of Christ comes to an end when your sanctuary service interpretation does? That’s backwards – the sanctuary service is a type of Christ, it is not something that limits Him.
I would rather be Christian and study Christ.
Um, what? I haven’t said anything like that! Where do you get these bizarre ideas you accuse people of?
Why do you keep talking about allegory when no one else is?
True enough – but the idea of the sin against the Spirit is being so certain that everything God wants is evil that there is no return. It’s like Kafni in The Chosen; he saw one bad thing linked to Jesus and after that saw everything Jesus did as evil. The phrase “as long as we stay in that position” doesn’t apply since there is nowhere else to go.
As one Lutheran pastor put it, you don’t accidentally commit the sin against the Holy Spirit, you have to work at it; as an Episcopal priest put it, you have to purposely set yourself against the Holy Spirit – not just ignore Him, but set yourself up as His enemy and oppose what He wants. A Foursquare pastor speaking on the subject compared it to being antichrist and saw little if any difference, calling it in essence the original sin of the original rebel, saying “I will be my own God” in defiance of and opposition to Yahweh. So it’s “defy and deny” on a different level, one that sees only evil in God – and will refuse to see anything but evil!
That’s only the beginning! Is is seeing the works of God and declaring them, and Him, to be evil, to be of the Devil. In a way it’s a matter of setting yourself above God.
Actually it’s more via Augustine than Paul. Paul speaks on two levels; it’s the theological level on which humans can do no good thing because he’s basically defining good there as “done well for God”. Elsewhere he, like Jesus, treats “good” with a more common definition.
This is one of those reasons Paul can be confusing – he often isn’t talking on an ordinary level.
Augustine took Paul’s theological definition and applied it to the ordinary case to a large degree, and we’ve been reading Paul like through a fun house mirror ever since here in the West. Sometimes it’s because he relied on a faulty translation, others it’s more complex.
Though as a modern German theologian noted, even if we take Augustine’s worst angle on Paul it doesn’t matter; every little sin is covered anyway. As Staupitz told Luther, if your conscience troubles you over every little sin, you’re missing the point!